About the new whitepaper
Published ahead of the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, a new white paper reveals that many countries and companies are now successfully decoupling emissions from economic growth. The authors call this phenomenon “Crocodile Economics” — inspired by the shape of the graphs. The crocodile’s open jaws capture the story: the path is uneven, but a profound structural shift in the global economy is clearly underway.
Crocodile Economics is part of the broader Exponential Leadership campaign, backed by ambassadors Johan Rockström, Nigar Arpadarai, Catherine McKenna, and Paul Polman.
The datasets
Data sources include the World Bank and the Global Carbon Budget for the country cases, while company data was compiled from publicly available reports by Klimatkollen and the Exponential Roadmap Initiative.
The datasets compare different types of growth streams. National decoupling patterns are visible both when looking at territorial and consumption-based emissions. For companies, the analysis was conducted both on Scope 1 and 2 emissions, and when including all three scopes. Click the images below to explore more of the graphs.
More resources
Watch this session from New York Climate Week 2025, where Exponential Roadmap Initiative co-founder and CEO Johan Falk introduced the concept of the crocodile economy for the first time.
